by Julie Overlease, July 14, 2020

 

I sat, favorite mug of coffee warming my hands, and looked out the window at the corner garden in my backyard. There, a salad-plate-sized sunflower caught my eye with a sunshine-yellow “Hello!” and sparked my joy. I noticed bright new zinnia blooms and these simple things filled my cup. My puppy snuggled into his little bed nearby and I knew children would begin trickling my way in time once morning broke. Nature’s beauty, my dear people AND coffee are gifts.

That evening, I hesitatingly answered a phone call from an unknown number and received a delight. Sonia Warshawski, a 4’8” Holocaust survivor in Kansas City known as a woman with a bigger-than-life attitude of determination and hope, and thus called “Big Sonia,” was on the other end. Her thick Polish accent immediately made me smile. We first met in a local market in the winter of 2019. I kept passing her in the produce section and wondered if the lady pushing the shopping cart was indeed a local legend. When she fell into line behind me at the checkout, I turned and inquired, “Is your name Sonia?” She returned my smile with her smile and said, “Yeessss.” I told Sonia her story inspired me and that I had written my own story of hope.

During our recent phone call Sonia said she came upon the letter I sent to her after our brief grocery store encounter. I wrote that I was in the audience when she spoke at my church and truly enjoyed her “Big Sonia”documentary in the theatre. I shared with broad strokes about my travels through Poland with my dad and little brother in 2013.

However, there are slivers from one’s lifetime that sear us. Standing in the Auschwitz gas chamber building, clutching my brother Anthony’s arm for security to squelch my anxiety and sorrow and empathetic imaginings, was a moment that put a chink in my heart. During our entire silent walk through the concentration camp property, my brain struggled to mentally contemplate the deliberate, calculated, cunning, evil actions which led to the demise of millions of Jewish people and countless other innocent Europeans. Nazi Germany under Hitler’s rule used the creativity of the human intellect to develop a scheme to trap and kill other humans with poisonous gas. Such cruelty I could not fathom. Train tracks and cattle cars that were once crammed with dehydrated and dying humans brought to mind scenes I had read in historical fiction. Electrified barbed wire. Guard towers. Infamous exterior light fixtures. Ponds where human ashes rest. Latrines and sparse bunk quarters. The sights of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camps were difficult to behold and process, even with the low stakes of simply being a visitor decades after the real devastation experienced by its occupants.

I am a mother to four children. My three daughters have long, lovely hair. When they were little I washed it and brushed it and carefully fixed it for them. The most disturbing sight I encountered at Auschwitz, even worse than the long hallway lined with 8×10 headshot photos of prisoners labeled with arrival and deceased dates that often spanned mere weeks or the starvation chamber of Catholic priest Maximilian Kolbe, was a floor-to-ceiling and wide-as-a-room glass display case piled with human hair. This memory has not been brought to the forefront of my recollections lately and the tears blur my vision as I write. Seeing that hair and understanding with certainty the terror and fate of the shaved humans was incomprehensible. So many of the locks were long and I internalized the dehumanizing feeling the women must have experienced as what is often considered an attribute of great female beauty was quickly buzzed and swept aside. I recalled the angst and sadness I felt in 2000 as I helped my then fiance’ shave my little brother’s hair once it began falling out in clumps from chemo to treat Anthony’s leukemia. Piles of dark hair mounded to the ceiling at Auschwitz. Each likely represented a human life lost. I stood before the hair and came undone on the inside. How could there be such senseless hate and evil in the hearts of mankind? As we later walked through barren sleeping quarters, our tour leader solemnly whispered into a microphone that fed to my headphones, “The prisoners were always cold and starving and exhausted.” We take so much for granted.

Sonia spent time in Auschwitz as a teenager. She lost three immediate family members during wartime. She succinctly recalled her experience as “hell.” However, she phoned me not to discuss WWII, but to inquire about purchasing my book Hope Upon Impactand wouldn’t hear of receiving it as a gift. Ripe with wisdom, when I asked her what she could offer about the state of our world with Coronavirus pandemic and societal tensions, she acknowledged injustice and hate worry her very deeply. She conveyed deep meaning in few words, which I have heard referred to as “Sonia-isms” and shared, “We are all going to the same place. We all come from the same place. We have to pray and be good people and try to help others.” I felt privileged to hear such wisdom from a woman whose life experience left her with kindness as her aim, not dark bitterness.

That evening, I cut that stunning sunflower from my garden and arranged it with deep purple, rich red, bright yellow zinnias, and just-bloomed, conical, white hydrangeas in a vase to deliver to Sonia’s doorstep with a signed book and letter. Evelyn, with a fresh driver’s permit, forged our short trail and only nearly mowed down one pedestrian. When I die, I’m going to ask God to quantify how sitting in the passenger seat of moving vehicles with my 14-year-old children behind the wheel aged me with each trip. From the sweat, tension, and fear that surges through my body, I’m guessing it costs me one month of life per ride. God help me.

Sonia called me the following evening after she discovered the book and vase of flowers on her front porch. To say she was delighted is too mild. She oozed with appreciation for the beauty of each bloom and with gratitude for the gesture. I found myself once again completely filled with joy to exchange a few words with such a special lady. Still sharp, she shared about a book she is reading about the Vatican and described the tricks the SS and war criminals such as Josef Mengele employed to get visas to escape prosecution. She closed with warm, affirming words I will always hold in my heart as a true treasure.

I am a mother with a daughter who suffered skull fractures and traumatic brain injury from a falling tree limb. I did not fight for my life, discriminated against for my religion, in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. I did not lose family members to evil. However, Sonia and I share beliefs in a few important attitudes that I recognize as central to celebrating each of our positive outcomes in this beautiful life that is ours. To summarize her words. “Pray. Hope. Help others.” In my words: Have faith. Hope on! God is good.